Worth fifty Colonel Jackasses! And I 've got a son in the Guards: and as
much laugh in him, he 's got, as a bladder. But we'll make a party, eh,
Radnor? with that friend o' yours. Dam funny fellow! and precious
little of it going on now among the young lot. They're for seeing ghosts
and gaping their jaws; all for the quavers instead of the capers.'

He sounded and thrummed his roguish fling-off for the capers. A second
glimpse of Fenellan agitated the anecdote, as he called it, seizing
Victor's arm, to have him out of earshot of the ladies. Delivery,
not without its throes, was accomplished, but imperfectly, owing to
sympathetic convulsions, under which Mr. Beaves Urmsing's countenance was
crinkled of many colours, as we see the Spring rhubarb-leaf. Unable to
repeat the brevity of Fenellan's rejoinder, he expatiated on it to convey
it, swearing that it was the kind of thing done in the old days, when men
were witty dogs:--'pat! and pat back! as in the pantomime.'

'Repartee !' said Victor. 'He has it. You shall know him. You're the
man for him.'

'He for me, that he is!--"Hope the mother's doing well? My card":--eh?
Grave as an owl! Look, there goes the donkey, lady to right and left,
all ears for him--ha! ha! I must have another turn with your friend.
"Mother lived, did she?" Dam funny fellow, all of the olden time! And a
dinner, bachelor dinner, six of us, at my place, next week, say
Wednesday, half-past six, for a long evening--flowing bowl--eh, shall it
be?'

Nesta came looking to find her Captain Dartrey.

Mr. Beaves Urmsing grew courtly of the olden time. He spied Colonel